THR Yoga

It isn’t often you get to write about a significant life-changing occurrence. And as soon as I finish writing that, I realize how it sounds. That now I am about to tell you about the snake oil that grew my hair back, my relationship with Our Lord and Savior, and the little investment opportunity I’m going to let you in on. But no! When I was 16, I badly tore the cartilage in my knee. I’ve had two surgeries, and if there is a next one, it will be a new knee. This knee has hurt me to some degree ever since—at worst, it hurts all the time, and for the past twenty years, it has always hurt to walk. Today, I am walking and hiking pain-free. The knee will never be perfect, but the improvement has been a very pleasant surprise. This fall, I started (here it comes…) an 8-week yoga series, meeting once a week with my friend Lesli. The sessions were really challenging. I am by any measure bad at yoga, any measure but one. I get into it. I am challenged, and I try my best in each pose, movement, and session. And I stuck with it. Consistency has been key. And damn!  There is no sales pitch coming, no app to download, and no QR code to click. I just never thought I’d walk without pain, and I think that offers some hope to others who are dealing with similar things, or who just want to maximize their mountain craft. I got to know Lesli Shooter when we both worked for the U.S. Ski Team. She was the head physiologist for the Alpine team, and I was a coach for the XC team. This was around 2006, so when you think U.S. Alpine Team, picture a lot of Olympic medals. Lesli will not talk about herself here or basically at all, but her role in this was significant. She worked with Olympic and World Championship medalists and was then hired away from the Ski Team to work for Red Bull, where she worked with a diverse set of athletes, even from NASCAR and Motocross.  Since that time, she has set out on her own, earned her 200-hour yoga teacher certification, become a board-certified positive psychology health and wellness coach, and has over 25 years’ experience working with elite and less-than-elite athletes, including everything from physiologic testing to training to yoga and wellness programs. I thought, especially given her background with Olympic alpine skiers, that an interview with her might be of interest to the THR community, but what resulted was more like a paper in its own right. Just like the yoga, we got into it! *** Pete V: How does yoga help treat knee and other seemingly chronic pains so effectively? Lesli Shooter: Chronic pain is rarely a localized failure of a single joint, but rather a systemic communication breakdown between the brain and the body. Addressing these issues effectively requires looking beyond the “broken […]